The Lonesome Bodybuilder by Yukiko Motoya

People will look closely at each person in the couple and see physical differences in their faces, but as soon as that micro-view is taken away they appear more and more alike. In one story (An Exotic Marriage), a couple who have been together for a long time starts to look like one another. Things are at times sinister, violent, and barely edging away from the grotesque or taboo. By weird I mean partly that it feels like you’re sent down a dark rabbit hole to an upside-down Wonderland, or even a Master and Margareta kind of a deal – intense, surreal and twisty-turny. The other half or so of the collection has a slightly different character. This story is honestly an easing your way into the weird world that is Motoya’s writing, it’s probably one of the least uncanny in the bunch. You’ll probably find yourself smiling and maybe even laugh, at times, because of the narrow road between the weird, the absurd, and the wonderful. What makes it strange is not so much the ingredients themselves but how this change in the main character’s life contrasts to the rest of her life, how other people react to her continually changing body – in particular how her husband barely notices. So out of nowhere, she decides to start training her body and become a body builder, at least get as close to a body builder body as possible – for the muscles attraction.

Take for example, the title story of the collection – a woman falls in love with the physical appearance of muscles. These stories are recognizable, without being standard in any way. These make up the magical portion of this collection, the kind of writing many readers going to Haruki Murakami for magical realism would likely find both challenging and immensely more enjoyable than Murakami’s tendency to re-hash old themes.

This collection as a whole starts of with stories of real tenderness but with a twist, they go in unexpected directions and it’s pure delight to experience them. Motoya’s first book to be published in English, The Lonesome Bodybuilder, is a Pandora’s box of weird and magical stories. I was introduced to Yukiko Motoya through her short story “The Dogs” published in Granta magazine a few years back and have been eagerly anticipating more of her work making it over to the English book market.

The Lonesome Bodybuilder by Yukiko Motoya